Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

How do you express your creativity? Maybe you’re a writer or a poet or a painter or maybe a photographer. My group’s mission is to get a photography club started at GW. The purpose of this is to improve the identity of GW2 School as a whole. But we don’t only want our school to improve, we want the students attending the school to improve also. By creating this photography club, we hope to inspire students minds through the arts. Our hypothesis is if there is a photography club with provided cameras for the students then it will improve not only the identity of GW2 by have more students involved, it will also help student express their creativity.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

    One skill that I have learned during this process is how to write and apply for a grant. This is a very important skill to have and I have learned this skill not only in English class but also in Science class. Finding the grant we would apply to was one thing but writing it was another although this was a challenge I feel like I have taken a lot from this experience. Another very important skill i have learned is how to talk to people in important positions over the phone. While searching for our grant, we decided we would call an art school to ask for their support. We had to write a script and even though in the real world you won’t have time to write out a conversation every phone call you make it made me and my peers understand the structure and even the tone of voice we should use in these situations. Lastly, the most important skill I have taken out of this so far is how to problem solve. While searching for a grant, writing the grant, and meeting deadlines  for the grant and other important things we came across many problems. My group and I knew from the start that we would not have Ms. Chintha’s full attention and support 100% of the time. So, knowing that we used each other for support and figured things out on our own. I can use all these skill outside of school for applying for almost anything like a job, to a college, or even a grant of my own. I can use the problem solving skills for any challenge I face.

Challenges We Encountered

    We encountered many challenges during our mission. One of them was finding the grant that fit what we needed. We were searching for a technology or arts grant, to fund school cameras. This was a hard task to do, considering the deadlines for each grant submissions. Something else hard we were faced with was being denied what we were asking for. While still in the process of searching for grants, we were also looking for sponsorships. My group and I called a few people regarding getting their support, but each time we were told that they couldn’t or wouldn’t support us. The last and what I thought was the most difficult challenge was having everyone on task and working as efficiently as they needed to be. I did sometimes get off track and do things not regarding our mission but I worked outside of school to make up for my lost time in class. But not everyone in my group did this. We had a deadline for both grants but not everyone met the deadline for our first grant (for this grant we had to apply separately). Hopefully for our next grant we will be able to meet the deadline.

Solutions We Tried Out

We had so many challenges, we needed many solutions. One of the main things we did was ask for each others support and opinions. This always helped because everyone in our group takes different things out of what we read online while doing research or finding grants/sponsors. Another thing I found us doing quite often is just to stop and just think things through. When finding the grant, we had found ourselves typing very specific things into the Google search box. Lastly, we didn’t give up even when we didn’t find a grant the within the time period other groups had grants or sponsors.

Next Steps

The next thing my group and I need to work on is finishing our grant and the submission form. We have completed and submitted one of our grants (Doodle 4 Google) but we have yet to complete and submit another. After this we will probably need to get support from our principal and have it OK with her to have a photography club. After this, we need a teacher supervisor/sponsor for our club (this is our schools policy).

Favorite Part of the Process

My favorite part of this mission so far has been applying to the Doodle 4 Google grant because I enjoy drawing and expressing messages through my artwork. This also seemed like the perfect grant to apply to because of the way you applied. For this grant you simply needed to express a theme through your artwork and portrayed the word ‘Google’ either abstractly or in a more straightforward approach.